Why Your Best Employee Might Be Compensating for a Broken System

This week, Jordan goes solo again to talk about a category of work that never shows up on an org chart: the checking, chasing, reminding, and reconciling that keeps a business running even though nobody assigned it to anyone. He walks through a hypothetical operations manager named Sarah, the kind of person every business has, who ends up compensating for a dozen invisible gaps a day without anyone realizing it's even happening. Jordan argues this "invisible work" might be one of the biggest blind spots when it comes to finding real opportunities for AI, because if you only look at job descriptions and process maps, you'll never see it. The real question isn't whether an AI agent could do Sarah's job. It's why that work exists in the first place, and once you can see it, you can finally decide what should happen to it. Episode Timeline & Highlights \[0:00] – Opens by describing a category of work that doesn't appear on any org chart, job description, or process map \[0:26] – Describes this as "the work between the work": checking, chasing, remembering, reminding, coordinating, and moving information around \[1:07] – Points out most businesses only think about work in terms of formally defined departments like sales, customer success, finance, and operations \[1:39] – Introduces a hypothetical operations manager, Sarah, described as indispensable because she knows how everything actually works \[2:11] – Walks through Sarah's day: she notices an incomplete customer step nobody asked her to check \[2:35] – Sarah catches a data mismatch between two systems and has to figure out which one is correct \[3:04] – Sarah recalls a customer's unusual arrangement from memory because the information isn't reliably documented anywhere \[3:28] – Sarah tracks down a stalled task, discovers two people assumed the other was handling it, and gets it moving again \[4:22] – Imagines Sarah disappearing for two weeks and the cascade of missed follow-ups and dropped context that follows \[5:28] – Argues Sarah isn't just doing her job, she's compensating for gaps in how the business is architected \[6:22] – Names this pattern "invisible work" and explains why it has to be recognized as work before it can be redesigned \[8:20] – Points out Sarah's actual job description almost certainly doesn't mention remembering missing information, chasing failed processes, or reconciling systems \[9:16] – Warns against just automating the compensation instead of fixing the underlying structural problem \[10:13] – Distinguishes between invisible work that is legitimate and should be formally assigned, and invisible work that only exists because something else in the business is broken \[13:08] – Offers a simple exercise: find the person everyone goes to when something gets stuck, and write down everything they actually do instead of their job description \[14:47] – Closes with the idea that some invisible work will go to people, some to AI agents, some will be shared, and some should disappear entirely once it's actually visible 5 Key Takeaways 1. The checking, chasing, and reconciling your best people do all day is still real work, even when it's not in anyone's job description. 2. Before handing invisible work to an AI agent, ask why that work exists in the first place. 3. Some invisible work is legitimate and should be formally owned; the rest is just a symptom of something else being broken. 4. Automating the compensation just makes a structural problem run faster, it doesn't fix it. 5. Find your "Sarah" and write down everything she actually does in a day instead of her job title. Links & Resources - smrtPhone: https://www.smrtphone.io - That Real Estate Tech Guy: https://thatrealestatetechguy.com If you've got a Sarah in your business, this is the week to actually write down everything she does instead of just being grateful she does it. More high-signal conversations coming next.